Wishes

All night the last of September plays a gentle cadence across the roof, in gutters, and against my dusty bedroom window. Rain brings leaves down now, no matter how tender the lilt. I would have been half way to Vermont by now; this and other wishes.

The sound of rain is a welcome weighted blanket at night which is to say it is a lullaby for falling asleep. However, staying asleep is another tune altogether. One can listen to the rain all night long and wish and wish until finally she surrenders to what is by getting up.

In the dark I pour and heat day old coffee. I measure the creamer because maybe sweetness is not what the world needs right now. The dog never seems to be confused when I shuffle around in the dark; if I am up, she is up and wants to begin her routine of: let me out, let me in, feed me, let me out. We make a compromise whereby I don't feed her until breakfast time but I will go outside in the rain with her. She usually shuns water which has always been weird for me to accept in a dog. But today we launch out into the waters together. I lose sight of her in the dark as I hang back under the slight overhang of the house, listening.

Eyes adjusting; coffee steam rising; the percussion of water against trees and ground and the glass deck table. A leftover plant dish overflows with hours of rain and the smell of October finds every pore and every capillary of my lungs. To take it in is to know joy and death at the same time. Longing and fulfillment. Love and love. October is complicated, though not on the surface. At first it is just a river that pushes onward despite fallen logs or steeped leaves. It flows and does what October does. It hosts birthdays and Halloweens and the last of any color that could distract from what is next.

Then, as part of living, it dies. Trees become witchy rakes and chrysanthemums turn brown and rotten and fall into their own roots. Everything goes numb and begins to sleep if they are lucky. Bird sightings become a gift given in scarcity. Who doesn't retreat is either made of stone or risks a kind of death. Libra always carries both loves...love of divine ecstasy and knowledge of earthly death. Balance, calibration, the movements of God. Teacher, student, teacher. Plant, harvest, repeat.

Dawn arrives smokey, dark and gray. I watch houses come into view, each winking with window light, one by one. School bus engines grumble and the neighbor's sprinkler turns on despite hours of rain. All that is left to do is tend whatever is here. Thank you for being here.